About This File
SC4 Plop and Paint is a DLL plugin for SimCity 4 that adds an in-game Advanced Plopping & Painting panel. It lets you browse your installed lots, plop lots directly, paint props and flora, create reusable weighted prop families, paint terrain decals, and quickly build detailed scenes without repeatedly hunting through menus or hand-placing every item.
The plugin is aimed at players with large Plugins folders, city-detailing workflows, MMP-style flora work, prop-heavy scenes, and lot-testing setups. It includes a cache builder that scans your SC4 installation and Plugins folders, reads exemplar/cohort data, and generates searchable lot, prop, flora, decal, thumbnail, and family data for the in-game DLL.
NOTE: This is a newer version compared to the last version that was available on the STEX before the Simtropolis reset! It now comes with prop/lot/flora picking functionality, better support for seasonal props AND texture painting!
The GitHub release v0.9.1 with attestation and SHA256 checksums is available at https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-plop-and-paint/releases/tag/v0.9.1
Main features
- In-game Advanced Plopping & Painting window, opened with O by default
- Buildings & Lots browser for finding and plopping lots, including growables
- Props browser with thumbnails, favorites, scene picking, and paint mode
- Prop Families tab for built-in families and custom weighted random prop palettes
- Flora browser and Flora Collections for painting single flora, families, and multi-stage chains
- Decals tab for painting texture decals on terrain and lot surfaces
- Direct paint, line paint, and polygon fill modes
- Grid overlay, snapping, rotation, spacing, density, density variation, and preview controls
- Pending placement workflow with undo before committing
- Prop strip mode for removing placed city, lot, and street props
- Favorites and recent paint history for faster repeat workflows
- Seasonal thumbnails where supported by the source content
Dependency
SC4 Plop and Paint requires SC4RenderServices v0.6.2 or newer. You can download it from the GitHub releases at this link or from the STEX page below:
Usage instructions
Full player guide, including screenshots, tab-by-tab controls, paint hotkeys, strip mode, decal options, and example workflows:
https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-advanced-plop/blob/main/docs/USAGE.md
Project page:
https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-advanced-plop
Demo video:
System Requirements
- SimCity 4 version 1.1.641.x
- 64-bit Windows for the bundled cache builder
- SC4RenderServices v0.6.2 or newer
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable x86
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable x64
- DirectX/hardware rendering mode recommended for overlay previews and decal rendering
Installation
- Close SimCity 4.
- Install SC4RenderServices first.
- Run the included SC4 Plop and Paint installer.
- Select your SimCity 4 installation folder.
- Select your SimCity 4 Plugins folder.
- Choose the thumbnail/cache settings.
- Let the installer build the cache, or run Rebuild-Cache.cmd later.
- Start SimCity 4, load a city, and press O to open the panel.
The installer places SC4PlopAndPaint.dll, SC4PlopAndPaint.dat, and SC4PlopAndPaint.ini in your Plugins folder. It also installs _SC4PlopAndPaintCacheBuilder.exe and Rebuild-Cache.cmd under Documents\SimCity 4\SC4PlopAndPaint\.
Rebuild the cache whenever you add, remove, or change plugins. Or when upgrade or install SC4PlopAndPaint.
Configuration
The plugin reads settings from SC4PlopAndPaint.ini in your Plugins folder.
[SC4PlopAndPaint] ; Logging verbosity: trace, debug, info, warn, error, critical, off LogLevel=info ; Write SC4PlopAndPaint.log in the directory above your Plugins folder. Disable if you don't want log files. LogToFile=true ; Disable this if you want prop painting without the draw-service overlay preview. EnableDrawOverlay=true ; Direct-mode preview default: outline, full, combined DefaultPropPreviewMode=combined ; Default paint popup values DefaultShowGridOverlay=true DefaultSnapPointsToGrid=false DefaultSnapPlacementsToGrid=false DefaultGridStepMeters=16.0 ; Thumbnail display size in the UI (22-176, default 44) ThumbnailDisplaySize=44 ; Thumbnail slot colors shown behind transparent thumbnails in the UI. ; Accepts RRGGBB or RRGGBBAA. ; Set either option to an empty value to make it transparent. ; Defaults: background=425066, border=5B6B84 ;ThumbnailBackgroundColor=425066 ;ThumbnailBorderColor=5B6B84 ;ThumbnailBackgroundColor= ;ThumbnailBorderColor= ; Recent paint quick-swap overlay and history EnableRecentPaints=true ; Maximum number of recent paint entries to keep (1-16, default 8). ; Only the first 8 previous entries get number-key shortcuts; later ones stay click-only. RecentPaintMaxItems=8 ; What to do with uncommitted placements when switching paint targets: ; discard = remove uncommitted placed items before switching ; commit = keep placed items and finalize them before switching ; keep = leave uncommitted placed items in place when switching PaintSwitchPolicy=keep
Most players can leave the defaults unchanged. ThumbnailDisplaySize may be useful on high-resolution displays.
3rd party code
- SC4RenderServices - GNU LGPL v2.1
- gzcom-dll - GNU LGPL v2.1
- Dear ImGui - MIT License
- reflect-cpp - MIT License
- spdlog - MIT License
- {fmt} - MIT License
- args - MIT License
- pugixml - MIT License
- yyjson - MIT License
- stb - MIT / Public Domain
- Windows Implementation Library - MIT License
- libsquish - MIT License
- mio - MIT License
- jsoncons - Boost Software License 1.0
- utfcpp - Boost Software License 1.0
- ctre - Apache License 2.0 with LLVM Exceptions
- raylib - zlib/libpng
- GLFW - zlib/libpng
- Fira Mono - SIL Open Font License 1.1
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